‘Lazy eye’ improves by playing Tetris

The popular puzzle video game Tetris appears to be a winner when it comes to treating adults with amblyopia, commonly known as “lazy eye.”

“The key to improving vision for adults, who currently have no other treatment options, was to set up conditions that would enable the two eyes to cooperate for the first time in a given task,” says Robert Hess from from McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.

“Using head-mounted video goggles we were able to display the game dichoptically, where one eye was allowed to see only the falling objects, and the other eye was allowed to see only the ground plane objects,” explains Hess, senior author of the paper. “Forcing the eyes to work together, we believed, would improve vision in the lazy eye.”